The Daily News opinion blog

Main menu

Post navigation

Defelection Time

Isn’t it grand when people deflect? You could be talking about one thing and they will suddenly point to some small thing you did and the conversation veers off in another direction.

And this, my dear friends and my three or four readers, is what the slanted media is doing with Romney’s 47% remark and the fact that the White House didn’t do enough, or anything, really, to pump up the security at our embassy in Libya. You tell me which one is more important in the large scale grand scheme of things, a comment that is based in truth or lax security that wind up costing lives?

But the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, could have been prevented. Weeks before his murder at the hands of Muslim fanatics, he allegedly told a reporter that the tension was rising in that part of the country and that he thought he was on a hit list. If he told a reporter, then he certainly told his bosses. But they didn’t do a thing to enforce the compound. The Obama administration also had reports that the embassy was unsafe and that there was going to be a strike at least three days before the ambassador’s murder. And again they did nothing.

After last week’s murders and rioting where our flag was incinerated and our president burned in effigy, the president issued a statement condemning the attacks before jetting off to Las Vegas for a fundraising dinner. He also pledged to work with the governments of the countries where the attacks took place. The problem is that many of those leaders are either in cahoots with the insurgents or are afraid of them themselves, so we will continue to wait for all the Godots around the globe.

The truth is that none of this would have happened to this extent under Ronald Reagan’s, or even Jimmy Carter’s, watch. Though that’s what happens when a being tries to fortify and understand an enemy who only understands might and force. It’s a case of the you-know-what hitting the wall. I’m just waiting for Obama to invite them to the White House for a (non-alcoholic) Beer Summit in the garden where they can all come to some sort of a settlement.

Yet the press hasn’t pounced on this as much as they have on Romney’s 47% remark that bears an element of truth as it relates to those who rely on our government for handouts. Apparently, much of the public is already hoodwinked. Not only are Romney and Obama in a dead heat in the polls, but many either don’t care or are playing ostrich with just how bad things really are. An acquaintance told me that he plans on voting for Obama because things “seem okay.” Our leader has tripled our debt and turned a deaf ear on warnings about the Middle East; our Secretary of State has apologized for an independent filmmaker’s Monty Python-like film about Mohammed; the unemployment rate has hovered at around 8%, though it could be higher because it excludes those who no longer qualify or have stopped looking for work altogether; we have become a nation divided by the haves, who often get that way through hard, painstaking work, and the often entitled have-nots, who seem to believe that opportunity should rain down on them just for being alive, and things seem okay?